Blog o cestovaní nielen po Japonsku / Travel blog

8. April 2014

Deň 20 / Day 20 – Mount Takao (Takaosan)

EN: Today’s plan was to visit Takaosan, or Mount Takao. This small mountain is located on the western outskirts of Tokyo, approximately one hour of train rides from the city center. Since I reside in Musashi-Koyama, my trip took a little longer than that, I had to transfer three times. It wasn’t that easy as the lines outside of the city center don’t really use English in their trains, so I had to watch my position really carefully. The last stop, Takaosanguchi was my final destination, from where it was really easy to find the entry to all of the eight tourist routes leading up to the mountain. Getting up there was slightly more difficult than I thought, I wasn’t in that bad shape, but it was quite tiring. The weather was hot, the sun was shining, some of the parts were rather steep, so I wasn’t the only one who was catching breath…It was a 660 meters long climb, but it was rewarding, with all the views and the temples on the top. Since it was Buddha’s birthday on the day of my trip, I was lucky to see some of the temple ceremonies, during which I obviously couldn’t film or take pictures. There were not a lot of tourists from abroad, I guess Takaosan doesn’t belong to the top list for occasional visitors of Japan, who have 2 weeks or so to travel across the whole country. I took some pics with Fujisan in the background, sometimes it’s really hard to figure out where it actually is. I did a massive mistake on my way back, I chose rather steep path to the bottom of the mountain, so my ankles were not happy about it. But it was worth it – if you have enough time to spend in Tokyo, go visit this nice mountain, try to avoid doing it during the weekend as it’s pretty crowded.